Dewey, over at the hidden side of a leaf, is hosting the first ever Bookworms Carnival. This month’s theme is novels, so feel free to submit any and all posts on that theme (though I think the “rule” is one post per person…). The deadline is July 13th (that’s tomorrow, folks!), and the posts can be sent to her at dewpie (at) gmail (dot) com.
Come join the fun!
I ended up reading A Good Year, by Peter Mayle. It was on the top of the pile, and it seemed like a sensible place to start.
That, and I knocked off one book for the Armchair Traveler Challenge.
A Good Year was a good book. Not a great book, though I think it may have aspired to greatness. Or maybe not. The best way to describe it is very laid-back. But then, it’s set Provence, and they’re nothing if not laid back there, right?
So the basic plot: Max is a London something-or-other high powered (never did figure out what), and he gets one-upped by this total jerk at work. So, in a fit of anger, he quits. Jobless, and soon to be homeless, he checks his mail and discovers that he’s inherited a house and vineyard from his uncle who recently died. So, encouraged by a friend, he moves to Saint-Pons and tries to begin again.
There’s heavy elements in there — Max’s midlife crisis, trying to fit in to a foreign culture, romance, wine smuggling (if you could call it that). But there just wasn’t the tension needed to make a really good book. It’s hard to feel anger for the wine smugglers (since they’re taking a batch of wine made in the vineyard and jacking up the prices and keeping the profits; smuggling is the wrong word, but you get the idea) since you never really get to know the “bad guys” (they just kind of appear and disappear). The only one you can even get a sense for is Nathalie, but even she’s not that fully developed as a character.
It’s hard to feel passion for the romance, since it just kind of happens in the background, too. Empty-shell, hard-on-love Max finds romance in Provence. No tension. It just happens. And it’s not all that satisfying when it does. Max also finds friendship in the “quirky” characters that surround him: Roussel, the worker who makes the wine that’s smuggled; Madame Passepartout, the eccentric housekeeper; Christie, the long-lost American daughter of Max’s uncle (there’s a bit of underlying tension there, but it’s easily dissolved).
In short, there’s conflict, and tension, but it’s all in the background. Nothing, really, comes through. What did come through was, well, the wine. Wine tasting, wine growing, wine making, wine drinking. There’s a LOT of wine in the book. And with wine, of course, good food. There’s a lot of that, too. And it’s beautifully described. I can say this about this book: Mayle knows how to describe a place so that you feel like you are there and how to write a good meal so that you can almost taste the food.
But in the end, in spite of the amount of wine that was drunk and the amount of good food that was eaten, it left me unsatisfied. And I find that highly disappointing.
I faced a dilemma late last week… I finished Wildwood Dancing, the last of my book pile, and I needed to stock up. Which got me wondering about choosing the next book. How does it happen? What’s the thought process behind it all? Sometimes it’s easy: like after finishing Sunshine, I consciously picked something completely unrelated because I knew if I read another fantasy after that one, I wouldn’t be giving it a fair chance. Other times, it’s just a whim: which book is “calling” me, which one would be just perfect for the mood I’m currently in. And then there’s the obligation books: book groups, blog challenges, ones that “have” to be read for whatever reason.
I was sitting on my bed Saturday morning, looking at the pile of books I’d picked up at the library the day before. One book for online book group (Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card), one book for on line book challenge (I decided to start with A Good Year, picked completely at random), one book a friend has been asking me to read (Uglies, by Scott Westerfield) and one book that I felt I should read (The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich). And none of them seemed compelling. Sigh. I could bail and read Half Blood Prince, which I’ve been meaning to do before next Saturday, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood for Harry Potter. Yet.
I’m not sure I’m interested in help picking out which book to read next. What I am interested in is how you go about picking your next book. How do you decide which one next?
I was supposed to get this one done before June 21st, for the Once Upon a Time challenge, but I didn’t, thanks to the library. But, better late than never, right?
This book, by Juliet Marillier, has gotten mixed reviews across the blogosphere. Some people love it. Some people not so much. I think I fall in the not-so-much category.
It’s not that the book was bad. In fact, it was a quick read. (For plot summaries, you can check out Becky’s and/or Erin’s reviews.) But, for me, it just didn’t sit well. For one, it just seemed too long. Even though it went quickly, I kept checking to see how much more left to go. Usually not a good sign. For two, I have little patience for “true love”. Especially when characters waste away because of it. I’m not terribly romantic (as my hubby often remarks), and I don’t have much tolerance for the heartbreak and heartsickness of true love. So when Tati, the oldest sister, lay dying because she couldn’t see her true love — an almost-Night Person (I totally missed that there were vampires in this book. Vampires are the in thing, aren’t they?) — I just gritted my teeth and plowed through. Please. Girls wasting away because they can’t be with someone they love? Not my idea of a good time. (Maybe having four girls has warped my sense of romance. I wouldn’t want them to think this was an acceptable way of handling disappointment or longing. Eating cake, however….)
And, I have to admit, I didn’t really care for the main character, Jena. I liked her a bit — she was feisty and quite capable, but she was just so practical. So sensible. The opposite of Tati. Which isn’t bad. (Ah! I’ve hit upon it here: Tati and Jena were opposites, both with their loves but not knowing how best to obtain that.) But she had to have EVERYTHING spelled out to her before she was able to act. It seemed for someone as capable as Jena, she ought to be able to do something without waffling about everything. Especially the important things.
The only thing I really enjoyed was loathing Cezar. He was a good villain — one of those that just give you the creeps. Not evil because he’s a monster, but because he’s a man who went wrong. (He didn’t get a good end, though; he just kind of petered out.)
The one redeeming factor is the absolutely beautiful cover. But then, we’re not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, are we?
It was probably inevitable that I read a book called “Eat Cake”, where the description on the back begins: “Ever since childhood, Ruth has found baking cakes to be a source of relief from the stresses of life.” Well, yeah. A novel with cake as stress relief? That’s the book for me. (Mmmmm, cake.)
So, Ruth is a 50-something housewife whose husband has a perfect job, whose 16-year-old daughter Camille doesn’t talk to her except in anger, and whose mother has been living with them for a year ever since her house was broken in to. Things are going pretty well when she gets a double life-whammy: her husband gets laid off from his high-paying job, and her estranged father breaks both his wrists and comes to live with her family. So, of course chaos — and cake — ensues.
The plot itself is a feel-good-and-find-your-purpose-in-life one, nothing deep, or spectacular. It’s just a fun ride. I probably would have been more moved by it if I had read it a couple years ago. But I found this book to be YUMMY. Jeanne Ray just knows how to describe cake. The whole act of choosing which cake to bake, baking it serving it, eating it… it becomes an art form. While I’m probably not even going to attempt any one of the dozen cake recipes in back (no one else would eat them, and I DO NOT need a whole cake to myself), I loved reading about them. Ray should write more food-based books, because she does that part so well.
I’ll leave you with my favorite passage in the book:
Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t, she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declines the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline, that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a part, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life.
Amen.
Actually, if you’d asked me, I would have said that I’m the furthest thing from rockin’, but Dewey seemed to think that I qualify, so here I am.
So, even though I don’t consider myself a “rockin’ girl blog”, I feel a sort-of obligation to pass along the tag. Here goes:
1 and 2. I’m going to tag the awesome editors of Estella, Andi and Heather. Putting together a respectable webzine every month, on top of all the craziness in their normal lives. That rocks.
3. Turtlebella over at Slow But Steady. Because she really does rock.
4. Nancy over at Bookfoolery and Babble. Because only a rockin’ girl (um, woman!) could live in Mississippi and have a good attitude about it. That, and I love her photos.
5. And all the good friends I’ve made blogging these past three years. (How do I manage to fit them all in a list of five?) You’re awesome, ladies.
Feel free to pass along the tag.
And the latest issue of Estella is up online. It’s a great one — devoted to YA books (Not that I’m biased about the greatness of YA books or anything). My contributions (it’s my blog, so I can plug my stuff, right?) are a review of a not-so-good book (though I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that I seem to be the only one out there who doesn’t like it!), and a really good book. Interestingly, I found it more difficult to write a review of the good book — only because I wanted to do it justice, and I’m not sure I did. And the author of the good book graciously let me interview him… I think I need to do more interviews with people overseas. It was really quite neat sending off an email at 10 p.m. and having a response waiting for me the next morning.
There’s lots of other really good stuff in this issue, too. Go and enjoy.
For all you non-Christians, this book isn’t for you. It’s basic premise — Rescuing Marriage and Sexuality from the Economics of a Fallen World — rests upon a belief in the Bible and in the words of Jesus. Without that, there really isn’t any point in reading this book. Oh, and this is going to be a long post because there’s a lot to say. Feel free to skip it. 🙂
For the rest of us, this book, by Carrie A. Miles, is an interesting look into the history of male-female relationships, marriage, and th expectations laid out in the Bible for both. Her basic assertion is that God never intended marriage to be “man rules and works and woman stays at home”, but rather God created male and female to be complete in each other.
The reason given in Genesis 2 for woman’s existence in no way implies her inferiority, but neither does it support the notion that she is complete in herself. Woman is not creation’s all in all any more than the man is. … Rather, sexuality in creation belongs not to the individual but to the relationship. Female and male exist only for the sake of the other. Power has nothing to do with it.
It’s only because of the Fall that the historical pattern of marriage emerged.
Miles spends a lot of time on the economic history of marriage. She asserts that it’s because man had to work for his bread that what we’ve come to view as “traditional” marriage emerged. And then, only because the woman had an asset that man didn’t: the ability to give birth. Because she could do that, and because children were essential to the economy of the pre-industrial world, she was by necessity tied to the house. If she worked hard in the fields, she ran the chance of miscarrying. Having given birth, she was tied to the house to nurse and then raise the child. Miles writes, “Eve was told that she would bring forth children in sorrow– sorrow because they would be valued not for their individuality or for their relationship with God but for what they could produce.”
Miles goes on to write that Jesus (and even Paul) asserted that this was not the way relationships between man and women were supposed to be.
Jesus opened the door not only to female discipleship but to the possibility of men and women interacting without reference to sex. Further, in shifting the blame for lust from the woman to the man, Jesus removed the assumption of sinfulness that adhered to women’s very existence as female.
(There’s even a chapter on the Song of Songs — or the Song of Solomon, as I know it — and how it’s a blueprint for a true and lasting relationship. Very interesting.)
She goes on to assert that what Christians believe is a decline in morals in today’s society is a result of the Industrial Revolution. Marriage, in the last 100 years, has essentially become a luxury, not a necessity. We marry for love, for sexual attraction, not because we need someone to bear our children so that we have people to work the farm. “Feminism,” she writes, “did not cause the breakdown of the family; rather, the breakdown of the historic functions of the family caused feminism.”
She goes on to write:
With the forces sustaining the sexual cartel gone, young women in the 1960s discovered that they had little restraint on their sexual behavior. Casting away the old morality once inculcated through shame and obligation, young women began asking themselves the same question that importunate young men had been askig forever: Why not? Why not enjoy the same “sexual prerogatives” that men enjoyed? Economically dependent on neither man nor child, tehy armed themselves with reliable birth control, the right to abortion should birth control prove not to be so reliable, and, if all else failed, the knowledge that a good job, welfare, or child support would sustain them. While far from every woman personally embraced the sexual revolution, middle-class women increasingly took it as their right to join the wealthy in behaving as they pleased.
So, what do we, as Christians, do with this? If what has been historically the traditional marriage relationship is not supported by the Bible, then what? Unfortunately, here is where the book breaks down. It’s not that she doesn’t make the book relevant to 21st-century relationships; she does. But she doesn’t do it with the same passion and assertion that she talks about the historical relationships and Biblical expectations. I’m not sure what I was expecting; this isn’t a marriage-help book. But, I think I was expecting some sort of light: Ah, THIS is how I can make my marriage work better. Or, THIS is what I can do to survive in this world. There is a lot of talk about “in the world of thorns”, and I suppose the assumption is that if we didn’t want to live in the world of thorns, we wouldn’t do that. Perhaps, I may have been expecting something Miles felt wasn’t necessary. In fact, her last paragraph reads:
The Bible offers a single, simple ideal for marriage: a union of two souls that is romantic, poetic, and by worldly standards completely impractical. But God did not create sexuality and marriage to be practical. Practicality is for those who live outside the garden. redeemed as Christians and as lovers, we keep the fruit of our own vineyards.
In the end, then I figure this book is just an extended study on how the Bible interprets marriage. Whether or not anyone gets anything out of it is completely up to them.Which, I guess, is a lot like religion and our relationship with God. We can learn all we can but if we don’t do anything about it, there’s really no point to the knowledge we have. We need to be constantly progressing and changing, and if that means reconsidering our relationship to our spouse (and children) then this book can be a good catalyst for doing that.
Ah, Robin McKinley. I love her writing. And I was reminded during my Twilight/New Moon phase that she had written a vampire novel. So, during the first lull I had (between challenges and Estella books), I popped over to the library and picked it up.
It’s an interesting story, set in an interesting world. Sunshine — Rae — is a baker in a coffee house, specifically the Cinnamon Roll Queen. She has a nice little life, a boyfriend, a time-consuming job, friends, but one night she feels restless. She drives out to the lake, to her father’s cabin (divorced parents, father’s whereabouts is unknown), and proceeds to get kidnapped by vampires. She is taken to be a sacrifice for Constantine, whom a master vampire (Bo), has captured and is keeping prisoner. But, Sunshine manages to escape (by changing a pocket knife into a key; she’s got magic powers, but hasn’t used them) and takes Constantine with her. And their lives will never be the same (ominous music here).
I liked the ethical dilemmas posed by this: if a human is supposed to, by default, have an animosity with vampires then how does one deal with the fact that you let one live? For Sunshine could have just let Constantine die in the beginning and never thought about it again. It was something the character struggled with throughout the book, and one I thought McKinley manages better than Stephenie Meyer does in Twilight (since that same ethical dilemma is present there, too, on some level). There’s a lot of musing and soul-searching in Sunshine, though, and while a lot of it works, sometimes it gets heavy-handed. And it definitely asks more questions than it answers.
I enjoyed the book, though the ending leaves things hanging. And, on one level, it’s okay. Sunshine comes to accept and deal with who she is (and it’s not just the Cinnamon Roll Queen). The big bad guy gets his comeuppance. She has a relationship with Constantine, but it isn’t as unhealthy and obsessive as Bella and Edward’s is. You can’t call it a romance, though it’s something more than a casual alliance or even friendship. It all ends happily, for what it’s worth.
But I really wanted to know what happens next. There were too many questions left unanswered, too many ends left loose. And sometimes that’s just unsatisfying.
All throughout the Once Upon a Time Challenge, I kept seeing Neil Gaiman’s name pop up. I’d read the reviews with interest, and would think it sounded interesting, but I wasn’t really motivated to do anything about it. Then, my younger brother hopped on the Gaiman fanwagon, and Carl added the incentive of a giveaway (though the odds are low that I’ll win anything), and so I checked out Stardust from the library.
I’m not sure you can count me among the hoards of Neil Gaiman’s super fans, but I did find this book charming and sweet. I was charmed from the first pages, with stable Dunstan falling for a faerie. I enjoyed so many elements of the story: the innocence and foolhardiness of Tristran, the crankiness of the fallen star toward him and her plight, the weirdness of the brothers (I was actually rooting for Primus, and so was a bit bummed when he got offed), and, yes, even the sinister witch-queen (though I think I was a bit disappointed by the way her story turned out). I enjoyed the sky-ship, the magical elements of the story, the way nursery rhymes came into play, the way Gaiman uses language.
It’s one of those stories that works just the way it is, but is really hard to define. It’s a fairy tale, but it’s not a typical one. It’s an adventure story, but mostly it’s just Tristran and the star wandering and helping and being helped. It’s a story about kindness and opportunity and, yes, love. I do wish I had read an illustrated copy; they sound beautiful.
I do have to admit that I’m made wary by the movie trailer; it looks like it’ll be fun, but I’m also suspecting that they’re going to play fast and loose with the story. Which would be too bad, since it’s nearly perfect as it is.
